"LIFTED OUT"
One of the speakers at the AA Woodstock weekend I have been attending was a woman who spent 15 years in a convent as a nun and was excommunicated. She is over 30 years sober. She spoke on the fear and sex part of the 4th step. She used examples from her life. She described a transforming moment at the end of her drinking that ushered her into the beginning of sobriety.
She had, with a great deal of agonizing, come to a decision to end her own life. She had lived with the disease of alcoholism and all its consequences for most of her life and the obsession and compulsion to drink were always strong. She was in the process of deciding the method she would use to end her life when suddenly, in an instant in time, God intervened. He reached into her body and soul, grabbed hold of and 'lifted out' the obsession and compulsion to drink. She told the audience she had no idea how or why this happened, but 32 years later, it has never returned to her.
This same type of experience happened to me...a stunning miracle in my life and an example of how God can create new and powerful possibilities. I had been sober nearly 3 months in Alcoholics Anonymous hanging on by a thread, the obsession and compulsion never very far from me.
On the 4th of July, 1985 I drank again which set in motion once more that overwhelming necessity to drink. I drank that night and all the next day till I passed out sometime on July 5th.
When I awoke the morning of July 6th, God had reached into the depths of my body and soul, grabbed every trace of the obsession and compulsion to drink and 'lifted it out'. I do not know how He did this or why, but it happened. It has never returned - not for an instant. The thought of taking a drink has never entered my mind since that moment.
Since that day, I have been on a journey of spiritual awakening in Alcoholics Anonymous and anywhere else God chooses to make Himself known to me, reveal something of Himself to me.
Forever grateful,
Prayer Girl
